The liberal blog of Matthew Rozsa, a PhD student of American history at Lehigh University. As a political columnist, his work has appeared in more than half a dozen publications, among them PolicyMic, "The Morning Call," "The Newark Star-Ledger," "The Trenton Times," "The Express Times," and university newspapers for Bard College and Rutgers-Newark.
He can be reached at mlr511@lehigh.edu.

Wednesday, March 23, 2011

Debate on the Minimum Wage: Part Two

For Part One, see: http://riskinghemlock.blogspot.com/2011/03/debate-on-minimum-wage.html

Santini's response to my post is pasted below. Incidentally, despite his reference to knowing me in high school, I still have no idea who the hell he is:

"Your response is incredibly ignorant, juvenile, and conceited. I can see you haven't changed at all since high school.

As for my cowardice, I sent you a private message because your privacy settings didn't allow me to respond on your wall.

I entertained the idea that you might enjoy discussing the economics of interventionist policy but you are clearly more interested in grandstanding and hurtling personal insults. I thought about "friending" you for the sake of your audience but have now chosen not to since we were never friends then and certainly aren't now.

As for your attempted arguments, I haven't the time nor desire to rebut them. I can see that you have fallen for the conceipts to all forseeable knowledge, central economic planning, and coercive redistribution of wealth. These are often uncurable maladies the unforseen consequences of which humanity has lived with for as long as pin headed wannabe planners like yourself have struggled to use government force for economic intervention. How well did price controls work in ancient Egypt or tarriffs for the nationalist parties of europe? Hint hint they didn't. The sooner you realize that the laws of economics cannot be repealed by politicians, the sooner you will understand the faults in your current logic.

Btw. I am not a conservative, but an Anarchist so fuck off. It absolutely takes cajones to oppose all government intervention and none to go with the statist status quo."

Here was my reply:

"I can't help but notice that, in the midst of all the insults you threw at me, not one of them addressed any of the arguments I presented in my rebuttal. While I'm not going to criticize you for insulting me - your insults may be wrong, but I can't fault you for doing something that I did in my previous letter - I am definitely going to hold you accountable for failing to address any of my arguments in your reply. While being a dick doesn't discredit someone's position, being intellectually incapable of responding to a rebuttal - or being too cowardly to do so - doesn't only discredit your position, but your individual merit as a debater. While intellectuals like Bill Maher on the left and William F. Buckley on the right are/were pompous asses, they have earned respect because they use logic to substantiate their positions and are rigorous in rebutting whatever anyone else says to them. If any of them had used your cowardly "I haven't the time nor desire to rebut them" cop out in public, they would have become the laughingstocks of their own movements. That's why, even though I absolutely did "hurl personal insults" at you, I also made a point of meticulously addressing every one of the points you made. Apparently you didn't like being debunked in a public forum, given the temper tantrum you just threw.

You say that the privacy settings on my profile wouldn't let you post a response? I'm not sure I buy that, since I'm pretty certain non-friends have posted there before, but just to be on the safe side I'll friend you, so that way you won't be able to hide behind that excuse any further.

Incidentally, the notion that libertarians and anarchists are "fighters against the status quo" is absurd. Libertarian theorists have dominated the economics wing of the Republican Party for decades now, and anarchists are so popular on college campuses that they vie with latter-day hippies for intellectual attention. If you want to masturbate your ego by believing that you're somehow brave or a freedom fighter, you might want to find another groundless basis on which to do so.

Three final points:

1. It's "conceit", not "conceipt."

2. As a graduate student in history, I urge you to not cite examples from the past, as you did ancient Egypt and nationalist parties in Europe. You clearly have no idea what you're talking about, and even if people nod at you and act like they're impressed when you do it in public, I assure you that anyone with an IQ above 110 will be snickering behind your back as soon as you walk away.

3. As I mentioned in my blog post and in my last rebuttal to you, moronic conservatives like you love insisting that liberals are "statist" and advocate "central economic planning" and "coercive redistribution of wealth" because - without those lies to fall back on - they'd have no means of rebutting anything liberals say. The fact that you have no means of proving that this is what liberals believe, but insist on it nonetheless, just further demonstrates why intellectually lacking blowhards like you are the lowest forms of life in today's political ecosystem.

PS: Any additional letters you write to me will be deleted, unread. If you want a response, post it on the thread. I'm not going to waste my time copy-and-pasting your idiocies because you're too lacking in testicular fortitude to post them in a public forum."